Environment

It seems that barely a month slips by without another slickly produced sustainability report emerging, bursting with photos of rolling green hills peppered with windmills, or healthy-looking kids playing in the sun. Not to mention lots of pie-graphs and quotes from people with the word ‘sustainability’ centre-stage of their title.

However, despite the apparent spin in many of these glossy reports - the core message is true and undeniable. We, as a community, need to reduce our carbon 'footprint' and reduce the build-up of carbon dioxide (one of the greenhouse gasses) in the atmosphere. Climate change and the future environmental disaster that we will leave to our children and grand-children needs to be addressed. This isn't a problem for someone else - we all need to look at what we can do to pull our weight.

As for the climate change nay-sayers I can only say that the overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that clobal warming is real. For others who claim that this is a purely natural phenomenon ignore the real issues. That is, climate change is happening and we need to look at ways in which human activity can moderate its future impact.

It's already too late for some small islands in the pacific as their fate is sealed. The melting of land based ice sheets (such as those on Greenland) and the resulting rise in sea levels will wipe out these communities. Low lying cities around the globe will be impacted. Changing weather patterns will impact us in ways we have yet to fully appreciate. The time for action is now.
 
Clearly, the only real way to reduce the overall human carbon footprint is achieve a reduction the consumption of fossil fuels. Any major impact can only be achieved by replacing energy supplied by fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Methods of carbon sequestration or carbon capture and storage are worthy of investigation so long as this is not used as an excuse to defer the development of renewable energy sources. Renewable energy sources are the only long-term option. As a society, we need to make this our No 1 priority and we need to keep our governments committed to these ideals.

We also need to consider how we use and waste energy every day.

This 26-minute video outlines a comprehensive plan for improving energy efficiency in all sectors of society. Although it has an American focus it has applicability to the situation in Australia. Donald Wulfinghoff has joined with Congressman Roscoe Bartlett and leading energy supply experts to sound the alarm to the American public about the depletion of fossil fuels and its consequences. It contains a lot of good thought provoking information. I was particularly interested in the section on distractions in relation to transport options (11min 20s). Most of this seems about right - although I'd disagree with Donald's comments on telecommuting.

These are all big issues. What can we as individuals or small businesses do?

We can help by choosing more environmentally friendly energy sources. We need to build more energy efficient houses and buildings. We need to look critically at how we use energy and if there are alternative ways we can achieve the same outcome while consuming less energy. In other words, we need to do more with less. There is another way of looking at the issue - the bottom line. Energy costs are increasing and will continue to increase as demand increases and if we can reduce our energy consumption we save money.

What impact could small business make?

The Council of Small Business Australia (COSBOA) estimates there are around 1.8 million small businesses operating in Australia, employing around 3.6 million people. The impact of one business may be tiny but collectively small-medium sized businesses (SMBs) can make a huge impact. Just to illustrate with a simple example from an IT perspective, an average small server creates as much greenhouse gas per year as a four-wheel drive. Think about it.

Also, in a smaller business, senior management commitment does not require wading through layer after layer of departmental sign-offs. Due to their smaller size, SMBs can make authoritative decisions faster and implement them sooner. In effect, they can start walking the talk while big business is still gathering together its internal communications materials.

Where to start?

Undertake an energy assessment/audit to understand how energy is used in your business. From this you can identify, on a case by case basis, how to reduce energy consumption, CO2 emissions and waste. This typically involves a project plan, communications plan, energy usage analysis, opportunity identification and analysis and implementation plan. Contact us for more information on how you might proceed.


Resources/Links:

Energy Institute Press

Green Computing Gathers Pace

Urban Ecology Australia